Let's just say that I don't run Windows for personal use even in a VM. It's just got nothing I need in it. And with very rare exceptions I don't buy software even for Linux. Sometime I do it just to encourage the vendor - RedHat, WordPerfect, X-Plane, Unreal Tournament 2003, World of Warcraft are I think the only ones (WOW under wine). In each case I tried the stuff for a few days and binned it.

I don't steal the stuff - it's just been many years since there wasn't a free and open solution for something

Normally you would have a point. But:
Why do I have to pay TV contribution when I don't have a working TV?
Why do I have to pay compensation for local copyright holders' when I buy a photocopier? I use it explicitly for my job (replication of technical studies done by me).
My cousin has a traditional morning cafe. Why did he have to pay compensation for the local RIAA? He did not have a radio in his cafe until recently.
There is a, state owned, special newspaper which publishes all the new laws that are ma

Uh, if you can just take them and sell them as your own, as many would do, what reason would the guy have to make the music in the first place?
Sure, there's the love of music, but some people (and I'm not saying this includes you), have to put food on the table.

Ah sweet sweet welfare! Where the poorest and laziest of humanity can drive Cadillacs and dine on steak whereas everybody else is sweating there collective lives away, barely making ends meet, working for the "man".

The answer was to add some trivial content to the old story, sex it up, and present it live in a comfy theatre where people would go be seen viewing it because it was cool. His marketing team was awesome.

For 5000 years the deal has been that if you stuff was worth listening to, people would pay to hear you play it. After a while, if you did well, the song became part of the culture.

It's only since the invention of eternal copyright that an artist expected residuals. And even that is a trap... The old must be forever deprecated for the new, so your art that might become an eternal theme must be abolished for the latest pop tart. This can't be done if copyright is rational.

Yeah, JK is rollin in the dough. she's also the most popular author on the planet, for about 8 years straight, and basically introduced half this generation to reading as a pleasure activity. She might not deserve as much as she got (about $200 million last year), but she still deserves a big stinking load of money.

There's plenty of fat which ought to be cut, the copyright system is broken horribly, I agree with the rest of slashdot on that. But JK Rowling is the shit, don't pretend otherwise.

J.K. Rawlings though doesn't show the abuse of copyright, however other authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien, George Orwell and other long dead authors who's work are still under copyright. The oldest HP book isn't even 20 years old yet, on the other hand 1984 is what? 60 years old? And still under copyright when the author has been deceased for almost as long? That is the abuse.

And whilst we're making sensible linkages (when you think about it, actual existing people really equivalent to arbitrary legally constructed restrictions on free speech) like that I think that standardised egg sizes is the solution to the problem.

This whole objection thing pi$$es me off! I have about 20 old books that I wrote years ago. This deal is worth anywhere from $ 1200 to $ 2000 that I could sure use but now everyone is weighing in to prevent that. I WANT my books included!

Nothing is stopping you from offering to license your books to Google (or anyone else) outside of this deal, or even releasing them under a license that permits redistribution by anyone for a fixed fee. The problem with the deal is that it gives Google the right to distribute a large number of works but doesn't provide any means for other people to acquire the same rights short of committing wholesale copyright infringement, being sued, and hoping for the same settlement.

You are actually right. Let's decide that only the copyright holders are allowed to read the books, and we're done. That's pretty much what they're aiming at for music, and books are sure to follow the same path.

What will it mean for public domain books? Well... no copyright holders means that those books will be removed from the market altogether. That way, the situation is really clear cut.

In the case of authors I know, they are neither dead nor are there works out of print. But as their works were in print outside of the U.S. (though orderable online, that is how the works got into the libraries to be scanned), the Google settlement treated them as out of print, so Google was going to treat their books as orphaned works.
I can understand the enthusiasm inside the U.S. for the deal (we can take everything published elsewhere in the world and take control of it), but the DOJ has to respect the

Copyright law is an agreement between "the people" (aka the government) and you. The first part of the agreement is that you enjoy protection and exclusive rights to copy and distribute. The second part of the agreement, that copyright holders often forget about, ignore or otherwise disregard, is that in exchange for said protection, the works would be released into the public domain upon expiry of the term of protection.

Here's the problem. The agreement is now lasting longer than the media it is distributed upon. This makes the works for which the people offered you copyright protection, unavailable to the people by the time the agreement expires thereby depriving the people of their public domain works and in fact the cultural and historical value of the works.

By having it available in digital archives, there is an increased chance that the works will still be available whenever the term of the copyright protection agreement has ended.

Because you sold that book to me. It is mine now. How dare you to command me what I can do with book I bought? Wouldn't you like to tell me what i am allowed to do with my car? or camera? or refrigerator?

The law dares to command you to not abuse the book. If the book costs $200,000 to $1 million to publish (adding up author royalties, and other publishing and marketing costs), the $20 pittance you paid does not give you the right to reproduce and sell it or give it away for free.

Oh, and the society you got your ideas and education from would like their cultural memes back as well.

You didn't create your work out of a void. Without the supporting culture, you would be little more than a quick witted animal. Certainly, with no one educating you, you would not have produced anything. Where is your payment back to the thousands of people who influenced you?

The contract is: you make it public, eventually it will be public domain.

The founding fathers give you a limited time to control it, and the moment you created it, you accepted the contract. If you don't want people copying it, keep it locked up. Otherwise, it will eventually be public domain and you get no say in the matter. Don't like it? Move to another country.

Also, in case you want to whine some more, it was originally ~20 years. So you're getting more than was intended already.

The contract is: you make it public, eventually it will be public domain.
The founding fathers give you a limited time to control it, and the moment you created it, you accepted the contract. If you don't want people copying it, keep it locked up. Otherwise, it will eventually be public domain and you get no say in the matter. Don't like it? Move to another country.

The Google Agreement also covers books where Google can't seem to find the copyright holder. That Google can't find them doesn't mean that the holder's rights disappear. This is all just a big land grab by Google, and you know perfectly well that if it had been Microsoft, the cries here would be deafening.

It should not be up to Google to decide that they can publish a work that is still protected by copyright just because they can't determine who the copyright owner is whether they've made a good faith effort or not. Instead, Copyright law should be updated to take into account orphaned works and what one can and can't do with them.

I can suggest three possibilities for handling orphaned works:

They should fall into the public domain so that everyone can take advantage of them

Ego? Contribution to humanity? Bragging rights? The sales of books caused by Googles advertisement of them? It's not as if human creativity suddenly popped into existence when copyright laws started.

On the other hand, this settlement seems pretty deeply wrong. It's pretty clear that the authors understood one form of the copyright law when they wrote their books. A change should involve serious debate and democratic processes. On the other hand, nobody but a big corporation could have pushed somethin

You dismissed his argument then supported it. Please think before posting. (how many hands have you got ?)If google have online publishing rights, what happened to your rights as the author ? Or the rest of us as members of the public domain ? Shouldn't these rights be the property of the state, i.e. the US, not a corporation ?

Maybe I'm misled, and it is perfectly legal for me to publish out of print books once this thing is settled, but I have a sneaking suspicion that only google have the rights now.

I think we can all agree that changes to the system that allow out of print books to again be produced and distributed is not a bad thing. What is a bad thing is creating a situation in which Google becomes the sole party responsible for the distribution of these books. I would feel much better if it wasn't Google, but rather a consortium of interests; corporate, academic, libraries, archivists, etc. Then one would feel that this wasn't simply a monopoly being handily delivered into Google's hands.

No; I dismissed his argument (he deserves our charity because he's an author or else nobody will produce books) and supported his conclusion (the google settlement is crap and badly thought out). Maybe you should learn to read before posting?

If you can't write a book in the age of the internet purely for the joy that other people might read and appreciate it, or use a searchable database of books to market yours, go get a real job. I cannot help you.

If google are going to assume rights over my work, without paying me for it, then I will not write. Why should I work for free ? Do you really think I have greater marketing power than google ?

And no, this is not piracy come home to roost. I don't care if individuals take and read my work without paying. I seriously object to a massive corporation taking my work and making money from it, without giving me my dues. Google are legally monetising piracy here. If you can't see the difference, well, sucks to be

Last time I checked, most software written is never sold, it's developed in-house as a custom solution. Thus copyright has almost no bearing on it, more likely would fall under trade secrets. See recent case of Goldman-Sachs coder getting arrested by FBI for example.

Erm... Isn't part of the deal to set-up the Book Rights Registry, which pays authors when their books are viewed online? If you do get royalties then I don't see how express permission is necessary. Otherwise, how is what they're doing any worse than what a library does?

I have a book whose copyright is registered in the USA, and I object to this deal. Not so much because people can download my book illegally - google for the title and the first hit is a site where you can do that - but because it gives Google an unfair competitive advantage that they obtained by breaking the law. I would have no objections if the settlement provided nondiscriminatory licensing, but Google wilfully violated copyright law and now gets to benefit from a monopoly on distributing a large numb

This is only a good thing if it leads to a better arrangement. The google book deal is not ideal, but at least it gets the books out there. If as a result of this deal being struck down we have copyright reform (not likely, since at the moment people dying of lack of health care is a significantly bigger issue), then it is good. If as a result of this deal being struck down, a better deal is negotiated with Google (which is possible), then it will still not be ideal. If as a result of this deal being struck down, nothing ends up happening, which is possible, it would be worse for the world.

In my opinion? The optimal solution would be to reduce copyright to a reasonable number of years, and increase fair use protections.

However, that is probably not what you were asking. In my opinion, the worst part of the deal is that it's exclusive to Google, and that third parties cannot get into it. This makes Google kind of the digital gateway for a lot of content. And I like Google, but at one time I liked HP, too. Organizations change over time, and it can be dangerous to make one group the digi

People who die because of lack of healthcare don't die because they can't get treatment at the moment of the heart attack, it's because they A) don't have the preventative care leading up to the heart attack, and B) don't have the option to go for more expensive treatments. You're not going to get on a heart transplant waiting list if you can't afford it.

Actually you are dead wrong. If you are dead broke and receiving SSI disability and Medicare you will get that transplant. But if you have a bit of money and are not on SSI you would not be able to afford the anti rejection meds which cost about 3K per month and you will not receive the surgery, Insurance usually will not cover these medications. This gets even darker. If you go to a hospital with an emergency condition and no insurance you will be treated. However, i

old friend of mine has recently lost most of her sight , she can't use her PC any more because of it.Her husband told me there is an operation which would restore her sight if she is operated on within the next three weeks, (about two weeks now it was about a week ago he told me). trouble is they don't have insurance, its not counted as a medical emergency and if medicaid will cover it , it normally takes 3 months or so to get the go ahead by which time it will be too late.

It's only "exclusive" in the sense that google is the defendant. Any other company is quite free to go through the whole process again ie scan, get sued & make their own settlement.
Anyway as I recall google is making these books available to other companies.

Google is optionally making their scans available to at least one other companies. Some of them are reputed to be of very poor quality, but nobody else is allowed to make them. Sometimes because of this court decision, and other times because of the exclusive contracts that Google made with the various libraries that contained copies of the out-of-print works. (And sometimes, I guess, both.)

I've not been well pleased by the way Google has been courting exclusive control.

Well spotted, and not only do you do that, you also make google the rights holder with the govt. being tied by contract. Let's let google handle the economy shall we ? Anything else we can put in the hands of profit driven private enterprise ? speaking as a UK resident, we gave gas, electricity and water over to private enterprise and they are all, without exception, owned by foreign powers and are much more expensive. Even though the public purse had paid dearly to develop the infrastructure. Go you liber

There's nothing inherently evil about communism; like all governments it will slip into evil if not regulated by the people, but since that hardly sets it apart from capitalism (there are real lessons to be learned in that department by what America is doing in the world right now — shit, we filled up mass graves with Panamanians for the purposes of securing profits and now people are suprised when they hear about the same thing in the middle east?)

Yeah, the Communism part was a joke -- but I did like the similarity between way-old-school philosophy, and a modern corporation, and also find it easy to believe that the Google motto was influenced/written by someone familiar with Confucious' works.

Non-Exclusivity of Authorizations. The authorizations granted to Google in this Settlement Agreement are non-exclusive only, and nothing in this Settlement Agreement shall be construed as limiting any Rightsholder's right to authorize, through the Registry or otherwise, any Person, including direct competitors of Google, to use his, her or its Books or Inserts in any way, including ways identical to those provided for under this Settlement Agreement.

Competitors would have to make their own deal with the rightholders - so, they wouldn't necessarily get the same terms - but that's normal business practice. You gotta negotiate your own contract, not piggyback on a competitor's.

But with the exclusivity, you give Google a monopoly over out-of-print books.

We're talking about works that the publishers had decided to let die. The copyrights are still in force, but there are not enough sales to justify printing another copy. As a result, they are not currently available at any price.

The damage to both the consumers and authors took place when the books were taken off the market. As long as they are both out of print and still protected by copyright, without an agreement such as this, w

They're not "stepping in", they're making a position statement on the matter.

So if the jury members have iPhones and access google it is a problem [slashdot.org]. But government making a statement on case in progress is fine? I agree with geonik's post - in Europe it would be inconceivable.

Amicus curiae is present in most common-law systems, including the UK. In France and Germany, at least, the courts are able to make requests for the opinions of third parties.

So if the jury members have iPhones and access google it is a problem

Yes, as it's a completely different situation. In this case, the opinion is provided to the court and could be presented to the jury if it meets judicial rules. If jury members simply look up information on their own on the Internet, there's no judicial vetting. (So, for example, a police organization could gather evidence illegally an

Is this the same DOJ that has been packed with "ex" Microsoft lawyers?

You have to understand that lawyers are mercenary. They push the views of who ever is paying for their $3000 suits. That these guys once worked for Microsoft really doesn't say much, they work for the DoJ now so there's no telling who they are looking out for, but it isn't necessarily Microsoft.

> The Google book deal has received considerable attention but> for the most part it has been negative.

Surely most of the general public has viewed this Google project as a positive thing. Only large multinational corporations such as the large publishing houses, the RIAA [sic], Sony, and Microsoft (with their copyright and DRM interests) are the ones squeeling about Google making a fair-use amount of a book available for a reader to peruse.

I think it's the exclusivity that bothers me. I don't particularly trust Google any more than Amazon and anyone else. Beyond that, I question the legitimacy of Google and a group that alleges to represent all authors cutting a deal. How is Google, at the end of the day, any more trustworthy a gatekeeper than Amazon, Microsoft or anyone else?

And I know a number of academics and authors have already called the deal into question as well, so its hardly just big multinationals.

But what's stopping other companies from making the same deal? Someone like Google, who wants to and seems to have the muscle to guard (or at least classify?) all digital information, made the deal first is not completely surprising.

And this is precisely why the DoJ does not want the deal to go ahead. Worse, to my mind, than a natural monopoly, is a government (or in this case court) sanctioned monopoly. A considerable number of people, including, yes, other corporations, but also academics and librarians, are deeply concerned about this, and view Google's suddenly "opening up" to let other companies gain access as nothing more than a bandaid.

The fact that the settlement provides no mechanism for their doing so. The only reason Google got these terms is that they committed massive, commercial, copyright infringement and got sued. The group suing them managed to get their suit counted as a class-action, meaning that they got to represent anyone who didn't explicitly opt out. They then settled. Given that the minimum fine for wilful copyright infringement in the USA is $7,500 and the terms of the settlement amounted to a small fraction of this

There are probably only a handfull of corporations with the resources to accomplish this on the scale that it's being done, and Google is the only one that has expressed enthusiasm for doing it. Instead of breaking the deal up, in which case everyone loses and noone wins, they should broker a more favorable deal with Google.

The problem is the case of "orphaned" (I'm not sure how strictly they are defining orphaned but other posts here imply it's not particularly strict) works, some body has through a class action sued Google on behalf of them. In a class action settlement the lawyers who brought the case essentially get to negotiate on behalf of the class and are trying to use this power to grant Google a settlement that lets them reproduce orphaned works.